Dean's Weekly Message

September 28, 2026

$50 Million Gift for Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak Program

Our campus has received a tremendous new gift: $50 million to advance our Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Leak Program at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine.

As Chancellor Don Elliman and I announced last Tuesday, this is one of the most significant philanthropic investments in campus history, and it will transform the future of care for patients living with a significant underdiagnosed and undertreated condition.

For patients with a CSF leak, the journey to diagnosis and treatment is often measured not in days or weeks, but in years. Debilitating headaches, severe neurological symptoms and repeated misdiagnoses can become part of daily life. Because these leaks are difficult to detect, many patients spend years searching for answers before arriving at CU Anschutz.

Inspired by the life-changing work of Andrew Callen, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology; Peter Lennarson, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Practice of Neurosurgery; and the CSF Leak Program team, the anonymous donor made this gift to accelerate and expand our thriving CSF Leak Program and extend its impact.

We have many people to thank for their partnership making this meaningful gift possible:

• Tom Gronow, EdD, MHA, President and CEO of UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital;
• Sarah Kabat, Vice President of Patient Coordinated Services and Advancement at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and Assistant Dean for Strategic Advancement;
• Naresh Mandava, MD, Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology and Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Advancement; and
• Scott Arthur, Vice Chancellor for Advancement.

Please join me in celebrating this remarkable gift, the outstanding team behind it, and the countless lives this work will touch for generations to come.

Strengthening Emergency Medicine Training with Denver Health

I'm pleased to share an exciting milestone for the CU Anschutz School of Medicine and our longstanding partnership with Denver Health.

Following months of collaborative planning, we have finalized an agreement that formally strengthens one of the nation’s premier emergency medicine training programs through the newly named Denver Health | CU Anschutz Residency in Emergency Medicine. The timing is fitting: this year the residency marks its 50th anniversary, a half-century of training emergency physicians who have gone on to shape the specialty.

While our institutions have worked side-by-side for decades, this agreement better reflects the true nature of our partnership—bringing together Denver Health's nationally recognized clinical excellence with the academic, research and educational strengths of CU Anschutz. More importantly, it creates a unified identity that will strengthen recruitment, enhance national visibility, and reinforce the exceptional training environment we provide for future emergency physicians.

This is much more than a new name. It represents a shared commitment to educating the next generation of physicians through an integrated academic and clinical partnership that benefits our residents, faculty, patients, and the communities we serve.

Thank you to Vik Bebarta, MD, Chair of our Department of Emergency Medicine, Stephen J. Wolf, MD, Chair of Emergency Medicine at Denver Health, and the many faculty and leaders from both organizations whose collaboration made this possible. Together, we continue to demonstrate what can be achieved when academic medicine and clinical excellence come together in service of improving health.

Employee Professional Profile Feature in Oracle HCM

The Office for Faculty Affairs has received questions regarding the Employee Professional Profile feature in Oracle HCM that was recently communicated by the School of Medicine’s Human Resources office.

We would like to share the following information:

• The purpose of Person Profiles is to establish a standardized repository of professional qualifications and experience within Oracle HCM using structured, consistent data fields.
• Data from FIMS and other systems was not automatically imported because much of the existing information is stored as free-text or in formats that do not align with Oracle HCM's standardized fields. Importing the data could have resulted in accuracy and data integrity issues.
• Person Profiles are not intended to replace or replicate all information currently maintained in FIMS or other systems. The initiative focuses on a defined set of professional qualifications and experience that can be maintained in a standardized format.
• Participation is voluntary. Faculty members are not required to complete a Person Profile.
• We recognize concerns about duplicate data entry. The University is actively considering broader data governance and systems-of-record strategies to reduce redundancy, improve data accuracy, and clarify where specific information should be maintained.
• Long-term goals include better integration between systems so that information can be entered once and utilized across multiple platforms, reducing the need for repeated data entry by faculty and administrators.
• The current Person Profile initiative is an early step in that process, helping establish standardized data elements that can support future integration and institutional data-management efforts.

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Featured News

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Faculty and Staff Updates

Patricia A. Gabow, MD, Professor Emerita of Medicine and former CEO of Denver Health, has written a new book, The Women’s Guide to Healthcare Leadership: The Why and The How, a practical, evidence-grounded, experience-tested guide for aspiring women leaders in the health care field. The chapter on current women leaders features Evalina Burger, MD, Chair of Orthopedics; Lilia Cervantes, MD, Professor of Medicine; and Donna Lynne, DrPH, who is the current CEO of Denver Health. The book is available at the American Association for Physician Leadership.

Honey Hendesi, MD, PhD, Instructor of Orthopedics, is the Principal Investigator of a recently awarded R01 from the National Institutes of Health. The $2.3 million grant tackles an increasingly important clinical challenge at the intersection of obesity, metabolism, and fracture healing. The novel idea is that intermittent fasting and the gut microbiome may influence skeletal repair, opening the door to new therapeutic approaches for improving healing in at-risk patients. Co-investigators are Douglas Adams, PhD, Associate Professor of Orthopedics; Janani Ravi, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics; and Vicki Catenacci, MD, Professor of Medicine.

Gretchen Domek, MD, MPhil, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, has received the Rising Star Award from the Council on Early Childhood through the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Domek is honored for her development of evidence-based interventions like Creciendo Sanos and PUPPETalk to improve early childhood development and parenting.

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Featured Events

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Recent Publications

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Have a good week, 

John H. Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA
Richard D. Krugman Endowed Chair
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs
Dean, University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine